Podcast: Transcription addiction. Liszt refashions Mozart and Donizetti.

In his later years, Liszt increasingly pursued his favoured causes by using piano transcriptions of other composers’ works; and his own symphonic poems appeared as transcriptions from the 1850s. In 1865 Liszt famously complained to Hans von Bülow that “I have better things to do with my time than transcribe, paraphrase, and illustrate, and from Read More …

Podcast: Godowsky’s Complete Piano Works • Konstantin Scherbakov concludes his masterly edition.

Raymond Bisha introduces the fifteenth and final volume in Konstantin Scherbakov’s recordings of the complete piano works of Leopold Godowsky, in which the programme comprises a number of the arrangements Godowsky made of Chopin’s Études. Reflecting on his mammoth undertaking, the virtuoso pianist notes that “this project to record Leopold Godowsky’s complete piano works began Read More …